Low Down Dirty Ducks!

While our timelines were all full last week of the exposé on Sophie The Giraffe and her dirty little secret, I realised I couldn’t continue to ignore the bath toys that I already knew were likely to have slightly dark and questionable souls! There were at least two ducks that are pushing a decade old, eight years old at least, so holding them up to a bright bulb was sufficient to see the grime. A few other brightly coloured sea creatures though were still in their prime and I was very surprised to see they had already started to turn to the dark side.

While I had Spencer in the bath the other night I went for it, I fished out the five offenders and just out of his eye shot, I took a scissors to them. The edge of nostalgia I felt for these little plastic pals who had been in and out of all three kids’ baths over the years didn’t last long. That very first dig I made into plastic yellow flesh left the scissors covered in black gunk and flakes of dirt immediately fell from the gap in ducks little wing. Gross. This was actually worse than I thought. My audible gasp and retching noises drew the attention of the soapy messer behind me in his bath and he copped what I had done!

“Why are all the duckies heads gone mammy?”. OOPs!

The build of jet black wet mould was much heavier than I had thought and even though the kids are not using these as teething toys in the way Sophie is used, they have them floating around in every bath; vessels of putrid dirt in their nice raspberry scented bubble baths. They often have water fights shooting rapid sprays of water out of the butts of ducks at each other too. Ugh, the thoughts of that stuff having got in their mouths.

Once I had explained to himself, the tiny boss man, that the ducks were worn out and we would replace them with even better ducks, I found myself looking at him with a raised eyebrow. What was he doing? I asked:

“Spence, what’s happening with the sponge?”

If ever there was an answer that would confirm me chucking every bath toy plus that sponge out the window into a wheelie bin it came now!

“Cleaning my bum, I pooed the bath”.

No No No No!!!!! Is there anything worse than having to tackle that particular clean up job?

On the off chance that your toys aren’t in bad nick or maybe are mostly quite new, here are a few tips on cleaning them with non-chemical products that are safe for your kids skin.

Vinegar is widely used as a harmless but effective natural cleaning agent. It’s not always the nicest odour to use but the scent of vinegar evaporates usually within an hour.

Remove any excess water in the toys by squeezing it out through the hole in the bottom of the toy. Remove as much of the build up as possible in this way.

Using white alcoholic vinegar is best as it’s colourless, mix two parts warm water to one part white vinegar.

Soak the toys in the solution for at least 15 minutes up to an hour, making sure the solution gets into the body of the toy.

Use a small brush, a nail brush or old tooth brush would work well to scrub the body of each toy getting really well into all little nooks and cranny’s.

Remove the toys from the vinegar solution, shake them off very well and again make sure to squeeze the excess solution out of the body of each toy. Rinse thoroughly in clean warm water.

Allow the toys to dry off in the sun or dry with a towel before giving them over to the kids again.

Seeing as the holes in these toys are the cause of the damp mouldy build up inside it might be worth taking time to seal each hole using super glue or a hot glue gun. Make sure this is done after the toys have been cleaned and when the insides are thoroughly dry.

Bath toys should ideally be stored in a breathable basket or mesh box so they’re not sitting in damp between uses.

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Sabrina is an Irish Parenting and Lifestyle blogger who writes about every day life as a mum of three. She never gets on top of the laundry and her bed is usually unmade but she's laughing every day, smiling and doing her best!! On The Chaos Of 3 blog, you might find a few rants, a few stories of adventure; you'll definitely hear about days' out and places to visit and very occasionally you'll spot something new to cook for dinner!
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